


with my own will i turned the summer from me

by fullmetalruby



Series: febslash fembruary [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Femslash February 2021, Immortality, Non-Linear Narrative, OR IS IT, Reincarnation, non consensual immortalification
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-04
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-16 23:41:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29215854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fullmetalruby/pseuds/fullmetalruby
Summary: Rowena and Helga; a story about love, life, and loss in five parts[Femslash February 2021 | Day 4 | Immortality or Reincarnation]
Relationships: Helga Hufflepuff/Rowena Ravenclaw, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Series: febslash fembruary [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2139714
Kudos: 2





	with my own will i turned the summer from me

**Author's Note:**

> ngl this shit is a mess and i should be paying you for having to read it. i feel kinda bad because this deserves to be longer, and i may come back and rewrite it later but for now i just want it posted.
> 
> written using the prompts sprx77 made for the timbitat discord. im sorry for this abomination.
> 
> title is from "An End", by Sara Teasdale

(iv.)

The death of her daughter drives the air from her lungs. She’d sent Helena’s…  _ suitor _ to find her, confident that if anyone could find her it would be him, and she’d known something was wrong even before she woke up to find her daughter, her beautiful, clever little girl, silvery and translucent and hovering, bloodied, over the end of Rowena’s bed.

Rowena’s screams wake Helga. Helga, who had been just as much a mother to Helena as Rowena had, had tightened her jaw and screwed her eyes shut and held Rowena in place. Later, Rowena will thank her for it. Helga always knew her better than she knew herself and knew what reaching out to hold her daughter only to pass through her like mist would do to her.

Helena was barely an adult. Nineteen. She’ll be nineteen forever.

Weeks, months, years later, watching her spectral daughter float listlessly through the halls avoiding the “Bloody Baron”, as the students call him, the idea comes to her. Godric, still and unchanging as they wait for spring to come. Helena, eternal.

Her third attempt at the panacea is a success.

There’s no way to reverse their ages, and so they’ll look over two hundred for the rest of the foreseeable future, but now more than ever, Rowena doesn’t care. All she cares about is Helga. And all it takes is a dash of the panacea in Helga’s morning drink-- an herbal remedy for arthritis which Rowena has been making her for a century-- and Rowena knows she has nothing to fear.

It takes Helga years to notice what’s happened. To notice that her aching joints haven’t been getting any worse, that time hasn’t carved the lines of her face deeper and deeper as time is so wont to do. As their students and friends wither and grey around them, Helga finally turns to Rowena.

Rowena will take that look. The horror, the anger. “What did you do?” Helga demands. She was a warrior in her youth, trawling the land in search of justices to uphold and wicked things to fight, and that righteous fire never left her.

“What I had to.” Rowena’s voice pointedly does not shake. She’s been planning this conversation for years, for every possible route it could take. She knows Helga better than she knows herself. Knows how she’ll respond. “I can’t lose you, too.”

  
  


* * *

(ii.)

Salazar’s death takes a lot out of all of them. Godric, who was closest to him, and their daughter, Sorcha, suffer the most noticeably, of course, but the toll is visible throughout the castle. Salazar’s students, who had been so devoted to him, are out of commission for weeks after his death. Several of their more long-term residents physically can’t get out of bed. Helga herself takes to caring for those students, working herself to the bone in the process. If she’s too exhausted to stand at the end of the day, then she doesn’t have the time or energy to think about her grief.

At least, Rowena figures that’s her wife’s reasoning. When she can set aside the time to think about much else. Rowena tends to the students as well, but in another sense. Where Helga makes food and ushers wandering students to their proper places, Rowena throws herself into the sewing, the mending, healing students, Godrics, and Helgas who have become reckless in their sorrow. Her potions.

Potions have ever been Rowena’s grounding point. They’re easy, compared to everything else. Fixed amounts of this and that substance come together to make this fixed result. Even things like the humidity or the lunar cycle, which would throw off the process, can be accounted for.

Mourning isn’t so straightforward.

Looking back, Rowena won’t be able to say when the idea comes to her. Of course, it’s been in the back of everyone’s, wizard and muggle, minds since time immemorial. Thousands have tried and failed. But Rowena has to try. She has to. If she fails, then she’s just another in a long line of failures. If she succeeds, she’ll never have to worry about losing the ones she loves again.

She sets to work.

* * *

(iii.)

The research itself is easy. The fun part is putting together a lifetime’s worth of knowledge, all her healing and potioneering expertise working in tandem on attempt after attempt after attempt.

Her first theory has to do with healing the body. The complete intersection of her two greatest talents. If she can stop the body from deteriorating, then the body’s systems will never fail, and old age will never run its course. All she has to do is keep the body hearty enough to keep restoring itself through natural processes.

This version of the potion fails spectacularly. She calls it off when her test subjects-- pigs-- heal too well, and, well. At least the tumors grew so fast the pigs didn’t know what was happening before they died.

She takes a breather before coming back with another attempt. Her second theory has to do with the  _ reversal _ of time’s effects on the body. Not in the realm of healing at all, but she’s confident that she can manage it. 

(She can’t, as a matter of fact, handle it.)

When Godric dies, they have to wait to bury him.

Hogwarts isn’t his ancestral home, but he loved it more than he ever loved the village where he grew up. As he died, he’d begged Helga to bury him in the crypt, next to Salazar, and who is Helga to deny her friend this last request? But the earth, especially so deep underground, is too frozen to inter a pixie, much less a man of Godric’s size. For lack of a better place, they stick his body with the strongest stasis charm they know and stick him in Salazar’s old office until the ground thaws.

* * *

(v.)

“You look well.”

Helga doesn’t look up when Rowena approaches, nor when she addresses her. If she pretends to not notice, then she can pretend that the girl behind her is actually her wife. Are they still wives, Helga wonders? They haven’t gotten divorced, but that was lifetimes ago for Rowena. The girl at the bus station with her is called Allison.

Resigned to her fate as functionally immortal, Helga has tried for the last several hundred years to get her body back to a state where she can do the things she did in her prime. If she’s going to be around, she might as well put herself to use, right? Those are temporary, though, and leave her to use glamorous the rest of the time. 

“How have you been, my dear?” Allison queries. Her voice is still the same as it was. Helga always loved her wife’s voice, even if she got used to keeping complements locked behind her teeth. It’s naturally dark and cold, and it makes Helga think of days spent holed up in caves, waiting for storms to stop long enough to travel again.

All dark curls and sharp cheekbones and sharper wit, Allison is a potioneer. She makes hair products in a shop in Diagon Alley. She has a young daughter from a past relationship who she loves more than anything else in the world. She gives to charity and volunteers as a summer school teacher. She remembers nothing from her past lives. That’s something honestly up to chance, whether Rowena remembers or not, and even eight hundred years later Helga doesn’t know which one she prefers. The Rowenas that don’t remember are just painful reminders of the woman she loved, and can’t stop loving despite the distance she forces herself to keep, even after Rowena doomed her to a seemingly endless existence out of her own fear of loss. But the Rowenas that  _ do _ remember self-flagellate for the rest of their lives. Which one hurts worse?

“As productive as possible. Those bigots in the black cloaks are popping up again.”

Allison nods. “Don’t be stupid and self-sacrificing. You can still be killed.” This, Helga knows better than anyone. As Rowena had explained, the panacea stops the effects of time on her body, which means no healing: if she’s cut, it will never close.

“I’m not the impulsive one between us, darling.” A moment later, Helga notices that she’s let the endearment slip. 

A flush covers Allison’s cheeks. They’ve been meeting most mornings, at this bus stop, for several months, carefully dancing on the edge of flirting. “You said you wouldn’t bring it up.” She messes with her recently-cut hair, specifically with the curl which she’d cut much shorter than all the others. “Besides, impulsive isn’t always bad.” Allison’s eyes glow in the early morning light.

_ I suppose not _ , Helga thinks. Takes a breath. Prepares for something new and familiar. “D’you fancy a coffee?”

* * *

(i.)

Rowena’s husband is a good man.

She’d married him when her father fell ill, and he’s good to her. He cares for their daughter and provides her with all the materials she needs for her research, and in return she pretends that she doesn’t know about the baker he’s been in love with since long before she met him.

But for all his political power, her husband has never been a fighter. When the rumors of a witch in the area approach, her husband is quick to get Rowena and Helena far away. And he does it by sending for mercenaries. Magical mercenaries are few but well-known, and Gryffindor and Hufflepuf are two of the best.

Rowena has Helena tucked close to her side, underneath the heavy travelling cloak her husband had thrown over her shoulders. All the manor staff have been sent to bed for the night, and the courtyard is silent aside from Helena’s little sniffles and her father’s quiet reassurances. There are two riders approaching from over a nearby hill. When the horses enter the courtyard, their hooves make no noise on the stone below.

“Ravenclaw?” One of the riders is dressed in black, robe lined in gold that’s only barely visible in the light of their lone candle.

Rowena steps forward, her daughter still huddled close, her husband hanging on to her other hand. “Myself, and my daughter.”

The other rider nods. “Gryffindor. That’s Hufflepuff.” This second rider, dressed in dark red, nods to the first. “One of you rides with each of us.”

Helena rushes back to hug her father. This will likely be the last time she ever sees him, and young though she is, she’s smart enough to know this is goodbye forever. Rowena, also, bends to press a kiss to her husband’s temple. They were never quite in love, but she does love him.

She turns away from him. Passes her daughter up onto the horse with the red rider. The black rider offers her a hand up. The black leather glove is warm when she grabs it. She gets settled in front of the black rider, casting glances over at her daughter every few seconds.

“Don’t worry,” the black rider tells her. Closer now, right in her ear, the voice is more distinct. More feminine. “You’re going someplace safe. Rowena, right?”

Rowena nods. She doesn’t look back at her husband.

“Helga,” the woman rider behind her introduces herself. “You’re going to be alright. I’ll be with you until the end.”

**Author's Note:**

> this doesnt even work with the timeline i have in my head but im beyond caring rn so whatevsies yanno
> 
> lightly using my salazar headcanons, which may or may not return at a later date if i ever get around to writing harry potter again
> 
> check me out on tumblr @fullmetalruby


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